Killing the Messenger
It appears to be one of the great early successes in open-source journalism -- exactly what MSM futurists like Reuters' Tom Glocer seemed eager to greet and other news organizations welcomed with little visible trepidation. But the unauthorized video of Saddam Hussein being hanged is likely to result in some severe penalty for someone -- one hopes it is at least the "guilty" party -- and for the moment the media focus seems to be on the act of taping some pretty odd gallows behavior by official participants (or were they? see below) rather than the behavior itself. Ironically, the overarching issue is not whether TV would show the actual death. These days that discussion is quaint beyond words. The issue is that there is tremendous news value in the illicit recording of an historical event that could not have been obtained any other way. And, but for this, history would have been inaccurately recorded. Recall that the first video released of the execution, the official...